February's Amber Alerts were first in state since wireless system implemented

Critical information is pushed to cellphones

Thousands turned out to honor Hailey Owens, a girl who was the subject of the first Amber Alert through the Wireless Emergency Alerts Program after she was abducted. Hailey was found dead hours later. Stacey Barfield, Hailey's mom, and husband, Jeff Barfield, are pictured to the left of the poster of Hailey.

Erin Petersen holds a photo of her niece, Hailey Owens. A middle-school football coach has been jailed on suspicion of first-degree murder in the abduction and death of a 10-year-old girl in southwest Missouri.

AMBER ALERTS

Kansas established an Amber Alert plan in September 2002. Since then, 24 alerts have been issued in the state.

Two Kansas Amber Alerts in recent weeks have drawn attention to and are the first in-state uses of a program that pushes critical information to capable cellphones in a targeted area to help law enforcement during child abductions.

Amber Alerts were first available to be sent through the Wireless Emergency Alerts program — WEA-enabled phones automatically are enrolled — in early 2012, but Kansas fortunately hadn’t needed such an alert until this year on Feb. 18. A second Amber Alert followed on Feb. 25.

The first one generated commentary on Twitter, as some people tweeted were surprised by the distinct noise and others wondered why they didn’t receive the informational alert.

Mark Malick, special agent in charge for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, this past week said the agency has heard complaints about not receiving the alerts. He said all major carriers participate, so the issue likely comes down to whether the cellphone is capable of receiving the alert.

“Those things are beyond us,” Malick said.

The cellphone activation part of the response comes after several moving pieces are put into place. Malick said authorities must receive the information (descriptions, photographs etc.), verify sources, populate the offline version of the Amber Alert website and deploy personnel to KBI headquarters to answer phone calls.

He said an Amber Alert during workday hours with information already good to go may be ready for activation in 45 minutes. An alert at night without information already acquired may take a couple of hours to issue, he said.

“The worst thing we can do is put out inaccurate information,” Malick said, noting law enforcement moves as quickly as possible without sacrificing validity of information.

However, that wasn’t the case with the latest Amber Alert information coming from Texas regarding an abducted teenager. She at one point was believed to be in the Kansas City metro area. However, later it was determined she had never left Texas before ultimately being found safe in Lubbock.

Unfortunately, if by human error or inaccurate information provided by a cellphone company, Malick said, the ping that placed the teen in Kansas was wrong.

“I don’t want that to diminish or take away the reputation of the program,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the time the information we receive is accurate.”

Regardless of the veracity of the information in the latest alert, Malick said the WEA program showed its potency as KBI headquarters became “flooded” with calls, which were “living proof” of its effectiveness.

That effectiveness is crucial because to activate an Amber Alert, authorities must believe a child to be at risk of serious physical harm or death.

National numbers show that 76 percent of the time a child is abducted by a stranger, that child is dead within three hours, Malick said.

With the Texas teen alert, media outlets in Kansas received the information about half an hour before cellphone blasts going out. Malick said that was because authorities wanted to release the information quickly but were still bringing in call-takers to staff phone lines before sending the WEA message.

The WEA program scrapped the previous text messaged-based system in which people had to enroll manually.

The WEA program uses a different technology to ensure messages are delivered immediately and aren’t tied up in potential congestion on wireless networks, according to CTIA-The Wireless Association. Also, the alerts are able to be sent to people within a targeted area, unlike the text messaged-based system. For example, a person vacationing will receive alerts for their current location and not for where they live.

According to its website, CTIA is an international nonprofit membership organization that represents the wireless communications industry.

Other alerts through the WEA program are: presidential (in national emergencies) and imminent threat (such as severe disasters).

People are able to opt out of Amber and imminent threat alerts but not presidential ones.

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and effect on behalf of the KBI and various other agencies. It got propagated on traditional broadcast media, weather radios, WEA alerts to cell phones and even KDOT had the Interstate
road signs flashing the Amber Alert. Again, GOOD JOB KBI !

Just one minor criticism to KBI... the audio sounder you use right after the alert tones on broadcast media (radio and TV stations) is awful. You can barely hear it. Instead of a music bed, use an actual alert jingle or sound effect.

"Amber Alerts were first available to be sent through the Wireless Emergency Alerts program — WEA-enabled phones automatically are enrolled — ..." and "Other alerts through the WEA program are: presidential (in national emergencies) and imminent threat (such as severe disasters). People are able to opt out of Amber and imminent threat alerts but not presidential ones. "

In my opinion, the "WEA-enabled phones automatically are enrolled" is just plain wrong. NO ONE should be automatically enrolled in ANY service, no matter who is the source. WEA-enabled phones (smart phones and any phone released in 2012 or later) are enabled and automatically enrolled whether the owner wants it or not. There is no way to remove the WEA from your phone although most of the phones can opt out of most alerts. People complain about nanny state legislation.
What the [expletive] do they think this is?